This blog follows the history of psychiatry

New Issue: Canadian Bulletin of Medical History

In the Spring 2016 Issue of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History two articles and two book reviews concern the history of psychiatry. The articles’ abstracts in english and french can be found below. As for the book reviews: Sarah Glassford is writing about Hyperactive: The Controversial History of ADHD by Matthew Smith, Delphine Peiretti-Courtis about L’Empire des hygiénistes. Vivre aux colonies by Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison.

In The Mind of Modernism, Mark Micale demonstrates the ubiquity of the concept of hysteria in the French imagination at the turn of the century. Taking this approach as our starting point, our study attempts to determine if the notion of degeneration played a similar role in the interactions of psychiatry, culture and politics in Quebec. Our analysis of a variety of historical sources demonstrates that the concept of degeneration did indeed penetrate aspects of psychiatric nosology, medical literature, news media, fiction, and political discourse in Quebec.

C. Elizabeth Koester: An Evil Hitherto Unchecked: Eugenics and the 1917 Ontario Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Mentally Defective and Feeble-Minded

In 1917, the Ontario government appointed the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Mentally Defective and Feeble-Minded, headed by Justice Frank Hodgins. Its final report made wide-ranging recommendations regarding the segregation of feeble-minded individuals, restrictions on marriage, the improvement of psychiatric facilities, and the reform of the court system, all matters of great concern to the eugenics movement. At the same time, however, it refrained from using explicitly eugenic vocabulary and ignored the question of sterilization. This article explores the role the commission played in the trajectory of eugenics in Ontario (including the province’s failure to pass sterilization legislation) and considers why its recommendations were disregarded.